ROME: Roma sacked club icon Daniele De Rossi and replaced him with Ivan Juric on Wednesday after a poor start to the season which has left the Serie A team without a win and languishing near the relegation zone.
In a statement Roma said that Juric had been hired until the end of the season, following the sacking of De Rossi after just eight months in charge.
Juric, who was most recently at Torino, is Roma's third head coach in 2024 as in January De Rossi was brought in to replace Jose Mourinho, and signed a three-year contract in June after taking the capital club to the Europa League semi-finals.
Roma said that De Rossi had been sacked "in the best interests of the team" but enraged supporters gathered outside the club's Trigoria training ground took their anger out on players leaving after Wednesday morning's training session.
A World Cup winner with Italy in 2006, De Rossi was dismissed as his boyhood club, with whom he signed a contract until 2027 in June, sit 16th in Serie A with three points after four matches.
The sudden sacking comes after Roma drew 1-1 at Genoa on Sunday, throwing away what would have been a first win of the campaign in the final seconds of the match.
De Rossi is an idol for Roma fans as a local boy who played in some of the club's best teams of the last two decades, alongside fellow icon Francesco Totti.
The 41-year-old, who grew up in a rough and ready beachside suburb of Rome, won over fans who saw in his passionate style of play one of their own on the pitch, despite a lack of silverware.
He won two Italian Cups and the 2007 Italian Super Cup, before finishing his playing career at Boca Juniors in early 2020 after less than a season in Argentina.
De Rossi had been a shock interim replacement for Mourinho as his only previous managerial experience had been four months at lower league outfit SPAL.
He was sacked in February last year in a season which finished with SPAL being relegated to the third-tier Serie C.
However he got off to a stunning start to life as Roma boss, revitalising what had become a moribund team under Mourinho and taking them to the Europa League last four where they were beaten 4-2 on aggregate by German champions Bayer Leverkusen.
De Rossi had led Roma to two brilliant wins over Brighton and AC Milan in the previous two rounds and briefly looked like guiding them to qualification for the Champions League for the first time since 2019.
But Roma's form tailed off at the end of the last campaign and they missed out on Europe's top club competition despite Serie A having five places for direct qualification.
That, and just three draws and a defeat collected from their four opening league fixtures of the season against largely modest opposition, cost De Rossi his job less than three months after committing his future to Roma.
Former Croatia midfielder Juric, 49, takes charge of his first Roma match on Sunday against Udinese before Athletic Bilbao visit Rome in the Europa League opener next week. --AFP